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Hello and welcome to montrealgazette.com and welcome to Midday. Here’s the rundown on some of the stories we’re following for you today. Work on a retention basin at the L’Acadie Circle begins today, rerouting traffic but hopefully preventing more floods. The 460-cubic-metre retention basin is intended to catch water run-off after strong storms, which has caused flooding in […]

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About 54,000 private-sector jobs disappeared from the Quebec economy in June according to Statistics Canada, one of the largest such declines on record. And economists are unable to explain the sudden drop.

When the Couillard government took power a little more than a year ago, there were strong expectations of an uptick in Quebec employment. The pro-independence Parti Québécois had been kicked out of office and a “Liberal effect” was expected to take hold. Couillard’s campaign promise was to create 250,000 new jobs over a five-year mandate. […]

The Red Cross says it has spent nearly $9 million on reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts in Lac-Mégantic in the 12 months since a runaway train smashed into the municipality's downtown core and exploded.

The Gardener’s Lodge Cafe has polished wood floors, aboriginal art and customers tucking into kangaroo-stout pies and sipping on macchiatos. All this betrays none of its past: The 125-year-old sandstone structure used to be a public toilet.

Here’s the assignment Obama has won with his re-election: Improve an economy burdened by high unemployment, stagnant pay, a European financial crisis, slowing global growth and U.S. companies still too anxious to expand much.

Montreal’s importance as an international financial centre may not be what it was 50 years ago when it still rivalled Toronto as a preferred location for banking and investment firms. That hasn’t stopped some of the top executives in the Montreal financial community from touting the benefits of doing business here.